RWE

A part of the "Networking Days", the graduates of RWE Supply & Trading* (RWEST) meet every six months with managers from all departments and the Management Board. On 5 and 6 November 2019**, the Trading building on Altenessener Strasse in Essen, Germany, once again provided an opportunity to engage in dialogue and get to know each other. The special feature of the event this year was its new approach. Instead of classical presentations, the organisers this time focused exclusively on direct dialogue.

To get the ball rolling, the 2018 and 2019 graduates first met for some “speed dating”. All participants had the opportunity to ask their counterparts personal questions and get to know each other a little better in a relaxed way. "This warm-up was a very good idea and created a nice atmosphere right from the start - even though the 45 seconds to answer personal questions were quite brief," says Wiebke Gorny, graduate in the General Business Trainee Program from 2019, with a wink. 

At the subsequent internal Career Fair, the focus was on direct dialogue with RWE Supply & Trading managers. The one-hour slots took place in two separate rooms. Graduates and managers were able to discuss the day-to-day business and rotation possibilities of the various graduate programmes in 30-minute slots. The graduates chose who they wanted to talk to, based on what they wanted to focus on. According to Tobias Gillen, Head of Corporate Improvement & Projects at RWEST, "it was a really good way to do things to let both sides to enter into a dialogue without any problems". 

"My absolute personal highlights at this year's Networking Days were the Q&A session with our CCO Andree Stracke and the presentation by Thomas Denny, Head of Controlling & Risk Management at RWE AG," said graduate Aylin Öztürk. “With Andree Stracke we had an exciting discussion on environmental and climate policy issues, Thomas Denny shared his experience with the innogy IPO and the E.ON transaction. The opportunity to interact with these two experienced managers was something special," concludes Öztürk. 

*RWE Supply & Trading is part of the RWE Group and besides offering RWE Supply & Trading specific graduate programmes like the Commercial Graduate Programme, they also host the RWE Group wide Programmes on IT and Finance. 

** The Networking Days are part of our graduate programmes. During the Covid-19 pandamic they were held virtually. To give you a flavour of what they are like "normally", we added the article from 2019.